How to define business hours?
In this article, you will learn how to set up business hours for human assistance in your bot.
Estimated reading time: 06 minutes
The business hours feature allows you to define the human assistance schedule for the different days of the week.
Set up the business hours and queuing business hours in the same menu
In order to configure the human assistance schedules, go to Menu > Configuration >; Live Chat. There, you will be able to view "General business hours" and "Business hours for queues" unified in a single menu. In this way, you will be able to indicate that the bot only refers conversations to agents within those hours.
We also recommend writing a text (linked to the conditional "during business hours" = false), so that when the user contacts the bot outside business hours, they will receive this notification.
Similarly, you can configure customized schedules for queues by clicking on "+Add" to be applied only in the segments you want. These schedules are displayed on the left side of the business hours screen.
Closed days
You can set the days on which human assistance will not be offered, for example, special dates and holidays. You can add the "closed days" of your choice by clicking on the month/day/year box and then on "+".
Force assistance
When this function is enabled, it overrides the previous settings. In this way, it will always be within human service hours and will try to refer to an agent if the user requests it.
Apply business hours
Business hours
Business hours work with the variable "isOpenNow" (you will see it as "during opening hours"), which takes a true value when it is within the business hours and a false value when it is out of business hours. In this way, you will be able to condition the bot's behavior according to the schedule based on these two values. See the following example:
Note: With the implementation of Multibot, you will see the isOpenNow variable as "On Hours". When you start typing "isOpen", the system will recognize the variable and will redirect you to "During opening hours" under the Project category, as shown in the screen below:
Business hours for queues
The queue business hours work in the same way as the general business hours, the only difference is that instead of using the variable "isOpenNow" they use one that is generated when the schedule is created. This will have the same name you have assigned to the timetable. See the example below:
Messages for closed days
In addition to setting the days on which you will not have human assistance, you can add a specific message for those occasions. To do so, you have to create an intent with the specific phrase you wish to trigger during such dates. To trigger it, place in the first message the action "go to intent" and select the intent you created with the phrase for the closed days. Use the condition "isOpenNow is False" for this to work correctly.
Remember to use the " Day for Project is X" condition to set the day on which you want the phrase to be sent; otherwise, it will be sent whenever you do not have human assistance. See the images below.
This simplified configuration will ease the management of your conversations and, therefore, the operation of your project.
Remember to visit our Help Center for further information.
Written by: Botmaker Team
Updated: 10/19/2021